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Mark V. Sykes, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory alumnus and director of Tucson's Planetary Science Institute, will give a lecture titled "When Dust Gets in Your Eyes: A Different View of the Solar System Emerges at LPL in 1980s." 

In the early 1980s, worlds in the outer solar system were being seen up close for the first time. Sykes discovered large new structures in the inner solar system studying data from a small satellite named IRAS. Comet trails (looking for all the world like airplane contrails in space) changed our understanding of the basic composition of comets. Rings of dust around the sun arose from asteroid collisions and revealed an interplanetary dust complex that was highly variable over time. Sykes also began his study of asteroids, primarily in the thermal infrared, and is now a co-investigator on the Dawn mission to the two largest asteroids in the main belt. Then there was Pluto...

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